


you're right by my side

by taxingme



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Getting Together, M/M, Magical Realism, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:16:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21918064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taxingme/pseuds/taxingme
Summary: “I don’t mind helping you out. It’s not like it’s your fault you’re cursed,” JT eventually says. Then he looks at Tyson with a mischievous grin and says –“Guess this means I better start sleeping with clothes on, eh?” And Tyson fully checks out for the rest of the day.***OR: Tyson is cursed and sticking by JT's side is the best thing to do
Relationships: J. T. Compher/Tyson Jost
Comments: 4
Kudos: 132
Collections: Hockey Holidays 2019





	you're right by my side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dejas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dejas/gifts).

> Hey there dejas - I hope you like this! Sorry this isn't your exact prompts and I really hope this tickles your love of magical realism. Just know, that I'm really sad I couldn't get a Tyson/Dante story out in the world but hope this Tyson/JT story will work just as well for you! I had a lot of fun writing this and really hope it works for you <3
> 
> There is a game mentioned in this but - as far as I know - it does not exist so please do not go looking for it. Also, I'm undecided if this takes place in a past season or in an alternate universe where that weird trade never happened - up to you to decide. The magic system in this fic isn't overly described and that is definitely intentional but feel free to ask any questions! 
> 
> I don't think anything needs to be tagged for but please let me know and I'll gladly do so. Title is from Dead of Night by Orville Peck (he's a queer cowboy, if you're not already listening to him, what are you doing with your life?)

Alexander is dreaming about Harvard. Something is freaking him out though, probably the colours, if his mutterings about “too much green” mean anything. Tyson looks around the dream that isn’t his and wonders which part is too green, if it’s the leaves crunching under his feet or the banners hanging from the big castle-looking building in front of him. Whatever it is, Tyson isn’t super interested. The longer he’s in the dream, the more aware he is that he didn’t mean to come here. He’s not stupid enough to think he’s a super talented Dreamwalker, but he likes to think he has enough control not to end Walk into random dreams about Harvard. Instead of focussing on the dream, Tyson concentrates on his physical body – outside of the dream – where his left foot is hanging off his mattress and his balls have fallen out of the old, stretched-out boxers he’s sleeping in, and wakes up. 

He glares up at the ceiling like it will fix anything. The dream is still lingering in his head, how wrong it was for him to be there and how uncomfortable Alexander felt in it and rearranges himself in his boxers before stepping into a pair of sweats. Once he gets to the first floor, he thinks about who to wake up first. Alexander is probably the better option, because one, it was his dream, and two, he’s usually pretty chill about being woken up early. But he could also hit up JT; one, because even though he isn’t formally trained, JT is super sensitive to weird magic stuff and he might figure out what’s wrong, and two (perhaps more importantly), JT’s voice first thing is all deep and rumbly and it makes Tyson feel warm and fuzzy. And JT makes Tyson feel warm and fuzzy 90% of the time, but JT first thing in the morning is a _revelation_. 

In the end, decency wins out and Tyson goes to the second floor, straight to Alexander’s bedroom. By the time he gets there, Alexander is closer to awake then asleep, so Tyson doesn’t feel super guilty about waking him up. He shakes Alexander’s shoulders until he blinks up at Tyson. 

“Beauty sleep is over, buddy. You’re not in Boston, anymore,” Tyson says, feeling pretty proud of his movie reference (even if he’s only 80% sure it’s from the one about the yellow brick road). Alexander sits up – brown Harvard shirt on – and rubs at his eyes while Tyson explains the dream to him. Twice, because the first time Alexander yawned through it all. 

“Pretty freaky,” Alexander says. “We should probably get JT. He’ll know what to do.”

There’s a moment where Tyson considers saying no because JT hates talking about his magic sensitivity. Then he remembers how truly fantastic morning JT is and promptly heads down the stairs to knock on JT’s door. When there’s no noise from inside the room, Tyson looks between the door and Alexander and makes a face that he hopes says ‘_you do it_.’ Alexander shakes his head and they waste a couple of seconds making ridiculous eyebrow-related expressions at one another. Alexander must get sick of it and motions for Tyson to do paper, scissors, rock.

Tyson loses on rock. 

“Best of three?” he tries but Alexander flat out refuses. 

Tyson pulls a face at him before bravely opening JT’s door. There’s no light in the room and Tyson doesn’t want to be rude, so he walks by the switch and reaches out to shake JT’s shoulder. Before he can though, light floods the room. He turns around to glare at Alexander who shrugs, unrepentant, with a smirk on his face. There’s a grumbling noise from the bed and when Tyson looks down, JT is glaring at him with half-open eyes. 

“The fuck’r you doing in my room?” JT says, voice as deep and rumbly and satisfying as Tyson remembers from the last time he woke JT up in the morning. Before Tyson can say anything, JT scrunches up his face and rubs it on his pillow like a cat. “What the fuck have you been doing all night, man? You reek of magic.”

“Nothing, I promise! I mean, I was in Kerfy’s dream but that was totally an accident and we came straight to you anyway,” Tyson says in a rush. He fights off a blush and refuses to look away from JT. He knows JT isn’t one to judge but a lot of people are freaked out by Dreamwalkers – it can get sketchy when it comes to privacy and bodies and stuff – and it would suck big time if JT turned into one of those people all because Tyson accidentally ended up in Alexander’s dream. 

JT sits up – Tyson can’t help watching the way the blankets pool at his hips – and tilts his head to look around Tyson and nod at Alexander. “Sorry, but I got nothing. We can go see Janelle before practice,” he says, before breaking off to yawn. It’s objectively gross but Tyson can’t help thinking that it’s also kind of hot. “And you guys can drive yourself, you’re both sweating magic and I’m not dealing with that for a whole car ride. Fuck global warming.”

***

Which is how Tyson finds himself in a car with Alexander on the way to practice. They talk a little about the day before to see if they remember anything weird that might have affected their magic. The night before Alexander had assisted on Tyson’s beauty of a game winner but other than that they didn’t have much to do with one another; Alexander had spent most of the day with Marissa and Tyson played Fortnite with JT. The Pepsi Center is heavily warded, but Tyson supposes it might have been possible for someone to fuck with them during a game. He really hopes not because there’s not much that can be done about curses besides letting them run their course. He might not be JT levels of sensitive, but he paid enough attention during magic training to remember that. 

Once they get to the rink, they have to wait for Janelle who is in a meeting with some of the coaches. One of the other magic staff lets them into her office and Tyson sits on the couch with Alexander, hands tucked under his ass to remind himself that snooping is rude. It’s not very often he gets to hang out in a Learned Witch’s office is all, and he wants to know what the freaky looking books in her bookcase are about. And what weird shit she’s been Googling lately. Alexander is sitting patiently next to him, scrolling through Insta and texting someone, probably Marissa. JT walks in after they get there and wrinkles his nose up again, muttering about how much they still reek. Discreetly, Tyson tries to smell himself. Magic has never smelt or looked like anything for him because, although he can do some form of it, he’s never been able to identify it. Alexander is weaker than Tyson so it’s no surprise that he can’t identify the magic either, but JT probably knows his way around magic better than Janelle. One time, he told Tyson that as a kid he was preparing for life as a Learned Witch and it wasn’t until he got accepted into the US program that he decided to go all out on hockey. 

“Well, what do we have here?” Janelle says as she walks in. She has deep brown skin, grey hair, grey eyes, an iced coffee in hand and is wearing a weird black dress that shimmers every time she moves. Tyson can never figure out how old she is and how much of her look is a performance. She’s so effortlessly _cool_ that Tyson is distracted for a second. While he’s figuring himself out, Alexander starts explaining their morning to her. Gracefully, she relaxes into her set and coolly inspects Tyson and Alexander.

“What do you think?” she asks JT.

He points to himself as if to say ‘_who, me_?’ even though there’s no way Janelle was talking to anyone else in the room. When she nods back at him, JT simply says “My natural guess would be that somehow they got cursed but I’m not 100% sure. Would have to be some pretty nifty work to happen during a game but also seems kind of pointless so far. For a curse, at least.”

Janelle _tsks_ at him. “Such a waste. All that intuition and you’re wasting your life on _hockey_,” she says with a derisive snort. “But I digress, you’re right. You two” – pointing at Alexander and Tyson – “have been cursed. It appears that some moron tried to join spells and because of the wards and idiotic nature of his plans, it backfired and each of you seems to have been hit with a different side effect. Alexander, your mild Projection ability has been amplified, especially towards other magic users, which is what happened with the dream this morning. It won’t really affect you because your natural ability is so mild. I’ll sort out a Blocker for you to wear and nothing else should happen to you.”

Alexander nods and shrugs; as far as curses go, it’s not too bad Tyson supposes. He didn’t even know Alexander had enough magic for it to even be amplified so it’ll probably be fun for him to play around with it until the curse wears out. Then he realises – 

“Uh, so what’s up with me?” he asks with a nervous chuckle. JT snorts and looks like he wants to say something else, but Janelle shuts him up with a withering look. 

“Don’t freak out,” she says, which is a terrible way to start a sentence when talking about curses. Tyson sucks in a choppy breath before motioning for Janelle to continue. “You’ve got a mild infatuation curse. Specifically, for Alexander, which is another reason you went walkabouts in his dream. My best guess is that whoever cursed you wanted you both to be obsessed with one another and super amplified so you couldn’t focus on anything _but_ one another.”

There’s a moment of pure silence when she finishes, and it only breaks with Tyson giggles nervously. Alexander is cute and all but he’s straight – painfully so, Tyson thinks as he remembers the time Alexander asked him about how sex with two guys worked – and there’s no way Tyson wants to be caught up in an infatuation curse for him. While he knows most curses wear off naturally, sex and love ones can get super weird if left totally alone. 

“Right,” Tyson says, refusing to look anywhere other than the corner of Janelle’s desk. He can’t bare to look at either Alexander – who’s probably embarrassed and unsure about what to do – or JT – who he hopes is upset about not being the object of the curse but, more likely, is only indifferent about the whole thing. Tyson _hates_ this. “You can, like, fix it, right?”

“Definitely. It’ll just take a week or two to wear off and to make sure it doesn’t go haywire on us, I’ll make you a Dampener. And well,” she pauses, and waits for Tyson to look at her before saying anything else. “I’d probably recommend that you stick pretty close to JT all week.”

Tyson’s eyes flit nervously to JT – who is staring at the floor with pink cheeks – before fixing back on Janelle’s face. “Why JT?” he manages to choke out, hoping he sounds something close to normal. He listens as she explains that JT’s sensitivity will help keep the curse in check until it runs its course. 

“There’s nothing else I can really do for you guys, so hopefully it finished up within the week. I know it’s a shitty situation, but you should be incredibly thankful that the person who did this was so inept. If their original intentions had worked, you would have been so wrapped up in one another that you wouldn’t have even realised there was a problem.”

The three of them leave Janelle’s office fifteen minutes later with a weird funk hanging around them. Alexander is warily holding his Blocker like he’s never seen one before. It’s a simple bracelet, similar to the ones that any magic users have to wear during IIHF tournaments so Tyson’s not sure why Alexander is so freaked out about. Especially compared to Tyson’s Dampener, which is a three-inch-long crystal attached to a thin necklace chain that he can’t take off for the next two weeks. As Janelle explained, neither of them will stop them from Projecting or Dreamwalking, but they have a better chance of cancelling out the curse. Tyson scuffs his feet and desperately wishes he could go back to the start of the meeting when he wanted to check Janelle’s search history. 

“Well,” Alexander says. “This sure is a thing that we have to deal with.” He’s trying to keep the mood light ant normally Tyson would appreciate it, but all he wants right now is to curl up in a ball somewhere where no one can find him. “I’m going to go see the trainers and make sure this thing won’t interfere with anything.”

Tyson watches him leave with a glare. Without Alexander around, there’s no reason for Tyson or JT to avoid Janelle’s advice, which was to basically share a bed until the curse wears off. Neither of them says anything until Tyson blurts out:

“We don’t have to.” JT doesn’t say anything, and Tyson can’t help filling the silence. “I’m sure I can survive this without, like, interfering with your sleep schedule. It’ll be totally fine, I promise.”

JT doesn’t say anything and if he was more like Tyson, Tyson knows he’d be scuffing his feet. There’s a moment where Tyson wishes he could read minds, so he could know exactly what JT is thinking about all of this. Then he comes to his senses and remembers that if he could read minds, he wouldn’t be allowed to play hockey without serious training and, considering how little patience he has for that stuff, it means he probably never would have met JT in the first place.

“I don’t mind helping you out. It’s not like it’s your fault you’re cursed,” JT eventually says. Then he looks at Tyson with a mischievous grin and says – 

“Guess this means I better start sleeping with clothes on, eh?” And Tyson fully checks out for the rest of the day. 

***

Later that night, Tyson is trying to think of excuses to get out of sleeping in JT’s bed. He could always pretend the Dampener is working and that he doesn’t need JT’s magic sensitivity to make it through. Considering that Tyson hasn’t been able to bring himself to leave Alexander’s side since they got home, he’s not sure it will work. He sighs and grabs an old UND shirt to sleep in. The worst part is that Tyson has no real issue with sharing a bed with JT. JT is snarky, attractive and ultimately a nice guy underneath it all; Tyson has wanted to bone him – and date him – pretty much since they first met. And now he’s going to share a bed with the guy and they’re going to be fully clothed and neither of them are going to talk about feelings. The only reason they’re even doing this is because of a salty Leafs fan and Tyson hates that guy so fucking much. In the end, he can’t think of a good enough reason not to get in the bed, so he climbs in next to JT who is in bed before Tyson for the first time he can think of. 

Tyson has no idea what to say once he’s in the bed. There are a few inches of space between them, but he can still feel the heat radiating off JT, and both of them are going to overheat during the night but it makes sense to be wearing something. Tyson’s never lied about his sexuality – not with team at least – and while JT’s always been good about it, things can change when you have to share a bed with your bi teammate. He doesn’t really seem to care though, falling asleep once Tyson stops shifting as he tries to get comfortable. It takes Tyson a lot longer but eventually he falls into a restless sleep. 

There’s a moment of blissful peace before Tyson ends up in Alexander’s dream again. 

It’s about Harvard again and boy, is Tyson glad that he never went to a school that put so much pressure on their students, that Alexander is dreaming about it this long after graduating. Alexander is wearing skates – that seem to have a toe pick – even though he’s trying to walk through the quad. He keeps muttering about green uniforms to himself and freaking out about his teammates. Tyson can’t really see the whole dream so he’s not sure if there actually are teammates around or if it’s simply something Alexander is adding to the dream. Before he can think better of it, Tyson wishes he could see more of the dream so he could help out better. Things starts making more sense and then Tyson remembers he isn’t supposed to be here right now. 

Dampeners, while super powerful, still can take a while to charge up so Tyson’s not super surprised that it hasn’t worked straight away but he is still annoyed about it. He ignores the shapes that are now turning into people – he thinks he sees Gabe – and focusses back on himself. His legs are hot, tangled up in his sweats, and JT’s sheets are slightly scratchier than his usual ones and Tyson can feel it on his arms and, _oh_, he and JT have come together during their sleep and JT’s arm is wrapped around his waist. Tyson’s heart flutters and instead of focussing back on himself and waking up, he zeroes in on JT and ends up in his dream instead. Walking so quickly from Alexander’s dream to JT’s is so disorientating that it takes Tyson a moment to realise what he’s looking at. Once he figures it out, blood rushes to his face so quickly it feels like it is on fire.

Tyson doesn’t want to creep on the dream so he pulls himself out of it faster than he probably should. His face is still burning and his heart is pounding. He rolls over and faces JT, who is sleeping so peacefully that Tyson would never be able to guess what he’s dreaming about. There’s a second where Tyson thinks about ignoring what he saw but before he can really think it through, he reaches out and shakes JT awake. 

“Buddy, you have got to stop doing this to me,” his voice is low and deep, and Tyson can feel himself melting into it. Then –

“Sex!” he blurts out, way too loud for how close they are on the bed. JT flinches, still only half-awake. Tyson gulps down two deep breaths before speaking again, a lot quieter and calmer than before. “Sorry dude, but, well. You were, uh – really sorry about this, man – but you were having a sex dream. About me.”

JT pales and scrambles further away from Tyson, before Tyson reaches out to stop him with a hand on his arm.

“Hey, no, chill. Where are you going?”

“Look, I’m really sorry. I get that it’s not cool, but it’s not like I can control my dreams – you of all people should know that. You’re just like, super hot and super distracting and _you’re in my bed_ and I couldn’t think about anything else. I’ll go sleep on the couch or something and we can explain to Janelle tomorrow that it’s not working. She can definitely make you a stronger Dampener or something,” JT says, rambling more than Tyson’s ever heard him before. Tyson doesn’t answer straight away and JT sighs, defeated and sad sounding. “I’m just, really sorry, okay?”

Logically, Tyson knows he should say something but he’s so caught up in the fact that JT was not only having a sex dream about him, but also seems to have some feelings for Tyson. Instead of doing the smart thing and talking about it, Tyson closes the gap before JT can say anything and presses a soft kiss to JT’s lips. It takes a second – a second where Tyson is worried that’s fucked everything up – and then JT is returning the kiss. They trade kisses for a while, Tyson settling on his back and dragging JT to rest half on top of him. He’s not sure how long they stay like that, but it’s long enough that he has pins and needles down the right side of his body and can barely feel his lips. He’s aware that they are both hard, but there’s no urgency to take care of it right now. 

“If I knew you were into dick, I would have tried that ages ago,” Tyson says, cringing a little as he realises how ridiculous he sounds. 

JT rolls his eyes before leaning in to kiss Tyson again. “You are so ridiculous but, I wasn’t 100% I was into guys so I was nervous about doing anything. Honestly, seeing you so open helped me realise that it wasn’t some weird phase or something.” Tyson’s heart leaps in his chest and he can’t help dragging JT in for more kissing. It’s one thing for your long-time crush to be interested in you, but a totally different thing for them to admit that you were part of their coming out journey. They break away from one another and Tyson is figuring out what to say to that when JT says –

“Also, sorry you found out from a sex dream. That’s so fucking embarrassing.”

Tyson snorts. “I solemnly swear to tell every single person that we got together because of a sex dream,” he says, blushing a little at thinking so far ahead. JT affectionally rolls eyes and Tyson knows he has nothing to worry about. “Also, I’m sorry I ended up in there. Dampener is still kicking in obviously.”

“I know, man. Trust me, if you were intentionally Walking around, this would have happened ages ago,” JT says with a small grin. Tyson blushes and lightly shoves JT’s chest. They trade one last kiss before JT gets all responsible and reminds Tyson that they have practice tomorrow. He grunts in annoyance before defiantly kicking off his sweats and spooning up behind JT; JT grumbles but Tyson knows he doesn’t actually care and the two of them fall asleep wrapped up in one another.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't talk about fic on there, but will add my tumblr after reaveals <3
> 
> Nothing in this is true except that Tyson Jost a) wears boxers and b) never ever changes them (according to his college roommate). I know that Tyson, JT and Kerf all had a different floor in their house but I couldn't remember which floor they had and once I wrote it I didn't want to have to change that element so sorry if I got it wrong!


End file.
